Easton Rapist Captured In Las Vegas Parking Lot

Kenneth Yarter, described by police as a serial rapist and possible serial killer, was captured yesterday in Las Vegas.

Yarter, 40, formerly of Easton, is charged with raping two women in Florida after he was mistakenly released from New Jersey State Prison last month.

He was apprehended without incident as he left the parking lot of the Frontier Hotel at 9:30 a.m., said the Northampton County Sheriff's Department, which coordinated the manhunt with the county district attorney's office and the St. Petersburg Beach, Fla., and Las Vegas Metropolitan police departments.

Yarter, who owes Pennsylvania five to 10 years in state prison for two 1980 rapes in the Easton area, is being held in Nevada on warrants issued by Northampton County and Pinellas County, Fla., courts.

The Florida warrant stems from charges filed by St. Petersburg Beach police, who say Yarter kidnapped, sexually assaulted and robbed two 18-year-old Canadian tourists on Aug. 12 and Aug. 13.

Yarter had a gun when arrested, said Detective Sgt. Julie Goldberg of Las Vegas police's fugitive unit. He said uniformed patrol officers took Yarter into custody after being alerted by a security guard at the hotel, where Yarter apparently was living in his car.

"He didn't say a word," Goldberg said of the 6-foot-1-inch Yarter, who weighs more than 300 pounds. So while he's been cooperative, "going along with the movements," and appearing not to contest extradition, "you don't know until he goes in front of a judge," Goldberg said.

The car in which Yarter was living was at least partly the cause of his undoing in Las Vegas. The car was stolen about Aug. 15 from a Bolingbrook, Ill., man who befriended Yarter on a bus trip from Atlantic City to Las Vegas earlier this month.

And the Las Vegas media had been told of the manhunt -- not by police, Goldberg said -- and had published Yarter's picture and a description of the car. Police circulated a description of the car to Las Vegas hotel security officers, and a lieutenant of security at the Frontier saw it.

It was the second time transportation led to Yarter's capture. Police earlier learned Yarter was the man they were seeking in the Florida rapes because he had to present identification to cash a $26 bus ticket in Chicago.

Yarter's release came because of what the New Jersey Department of Corrections characterized as "a clerical oversight." The order that he be transferred to Pennsylvania to serve his sentence there after completing his New Jersey state prison term apparently was not entered when his records were computerized.